David Garrow: A 42-year rush to justice
[DAVID J. GARROW, a senior fellow at Cambridge University, is the author of "Bearing the Cross," a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.]
LAST WEEK'S murder indictment of a former Alabama state trooper for the 1965 shooting of a young black voting-rights demonstrator is one more Deep South prosecution of a long-forgotten white defendant who ended up on the wrong side of the civil rights revolution.
It's one of many. In recent years, prosecutors have won convictions in connection with, among others, the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., and the killings of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964. In many of these cases, credible eyewitness testimony — from survivors, co-conspirators and even close relatives — has proved crucial in winning solid convictions in connection with decades-old race crimes.
But this indictment may be different. At first glance, the charges filed against 73-year-old James Bonard Fowler seem straightforward. Fowler was one of about 50 Alabama troopers dispatched to the small Perry County town of Marion on Feb. 18, 1965, to break up a nonviolent demonstration that was part of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nascent voting-rights campaign, centered in nearby Selma. One of King's aides had been jailed in Marion earlier that day, and the after-dark protest march in the town square was blocked by the lawmen, who then set upon the 400 marchers with nightsticks. Onlooking journalists were attacked by local whites, and as some of the marchers fled the square, troopers pursued them.
Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, ran into nearby Mack's Cafe along with his mother, Viola. Shortly after, four troopers entered. Written statements given later by three troopers say that bottles were thrown at them from the cafe and that more bottles met them when they burst in. Fowler's declaration and that of another still-living former trooper, Robert C. Andrews, describe a tussle over a bottle between a black woman — probably the late Viola Jackson — and a third trooper, who then was assaulted by two black men.
Fowler grabbed one of those men, Jimmie Lee Jackson, whom he says struck him with a bottle several times while simultaneously attempting to remove his gun from its holster. Both men lost their balance, Fowler wrote, and "on the next blow which struck my hand the gun fired."
But that's where the story starts to get slightly murkier. Andrews' statement is different from Fowler's account. He describes seeing Fowler shove Jackson aside and says that when Jackson "again advanced toward Corporal Fowler, he drew his revolver and fired." When Fowler himself recalled the incident in his first-ever public interview in 2005 with the Anniston Star, he told Editor John Fleming that during the tussle "my hand was on the trigger then and I pulled the trigger." He added that "I don't remember how many times I pulled the trigger, but I think I just pulled it once, but I might have pulled it three times." ...
Although it's true that there are elements of the story that certainly don't look good for Fowler — such as the fact that he killed another black man a year later — it's not so clear that the case itself has been terribly well thought out or that the evidence amounts to all that much.
The murder indictment Jackson obtained on Wednesday came from a grand jury that heard a sum total of only two hours of testimony, none of which came from anyone who actually saw the shooting, according to the Associated Press and other reports. ...
Read entire article at LAT
LAST WEEK'S murder indictment of a former Alabama state trooper for the 1965 shooting of a young black voting-rights demonstrator is one more Deep South prosecution of a long-forgotten white defendant who ended up on the wrong side of the civil rights revolution.
It's one of many. In recent years, prosecutors have won convictions in connection with, among others, the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Ala., and the killings of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964. In many of these cases, credible eyewitness testimony — from survivors, co-conspirators and even close relatives — has proved crucial in winning solid convictions in connection with decades-old race crimes.
But this indictment may be different. At first glance, the charges filed against 73-year-old James Bonard Fowler seem straightforward. Fowler was one of about 50 Alabama troopers dispatched to the small Perry County town of Marion on Feb. 18, 1965, to break up a nonviolent demonstration that was part of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s nascent voting-rights campaign, centered in nearby Selma. One of King's aides had been jailed in Marion earlier that day, and the after-dark protest march in the town square was blocked by the lawmen, who then set upon the 400 marchers with nightsticks. Onlooking journalists were attacked by local whites, and as some of the marchers fled the square, troopers pursued them.
Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, ran into nearby Mack's Cafe along with his mother, Viola. Shortly after, four troopers entered. Written statements given later by three troopers say that bottles were thrown at them from the cafe and that more bottles met them when they burst in. Fowler's declaration and that of another still-living former trooper, Robert C. Andrews, describe a tussle over a bottle between a black woman — probably the late Viola Jackson — and a third trooper, who then was assaulted by two black men.
Fowler grabbed one of those men, Jimmie Lee Jackson, whom he says struck him with a bottle several times while simultaneously attempting to remove his gun from its holster. Both men lost their balance, Fowler wrote, and "on the next blow which struck my hand the gun fired."
But that's where the story starts to get slightly murkier. Andrews' statement is different from Fowler's account. He describes seeing Fowler shove Jackson aside and says that when Jackson "again advanced toward Corporal Fowler, he drew his revolver and fired." When Fowler himself recalled the incident in his first-ever public interview in 2005 with the Anniston Star, he told Editor John Fleming that during the tussle "my hand was on the trigger then and I pulled the trigger." He added that "I don't remember how many times I pulled the trigger, but I think I just pulled it once, but I might have pulled it three times." ...
Although it's true that there are elements of the story that certainly don't look good for Fowler — such as the fact that he killed another black man a year later — it's not so clear that the case itself has been terribly well thought out or that the evidence amounts to all that much.
The murder indictment Jackson obtained on Wednesday came from a grand jury that heard a sum total of only two hours of testimony, none of which came from anyone who actually saw the shooting, according to the Associated Press and other reports. ...